The experience and consequences of being subjected to a stereotype of low intellectual ability -- be it because one is blonde or one is black -- are remarkably similar across these different stereotypes.
My mind settled down by the time the flight attendant announced our arrival in Boston, at which point it dawned on me that Philippa was exhibiting three great human qualities: acceptance, tolerance, and forgiveness.
My dad and his friends weren't the only ones spooked by the news; that weekend the tenor of the whole town changed. The fury from the prior night morphed into fear, and fear devolved into panic.
With 2013's arrival, much like a gardener using a shovel to prepare for planting (then one day, harvesting), I invite you to explore your faith, facts and fictions with the following questions (shovels) over the weeks and months ahead.
Take a moment now to ponder your definition of a fact. How do you accept something as a fact? Do you take time to verify (through first-hand experience) a fact before you accept a fact to be true? How often do you check facts?
Mathematicians often step carefully and even warily from one logical statement to the next. One misstep can lead to inaccuracy.
Mutual understanding doesn't translate into a vote or even guarantee a change in others' beliefs. But it certainly makes the opportunity for influence more likely.
Friendship continues to take so many forms that I cannot describe it in general. What I do know is that "friendship" with both men and women in my life has some essential qualities.
Many successful women hold beliefs about how they should live and work that produce faulty assumptions that can cause undue stress.
I assume I know my children pretty well. I know their likes, dislikes, fears and dreams. I used to know these things, anyway. Now, I'm not so sure.
If my kids know they are who they are -- bright, sweet, scrappy girl and smart, athletic, long-haired boy -- does it matter whether strangers know anything beyond their first impressions?
Nuclear disarmament is a job for faith -- and for the kind of social movements that faith at its best has always inspired.
It occurs to me this morning how many assumptions we make that enable us to keep on going without, you know, screaming, or drinking at breakfast.
The belief that we are all competing with each other for scarce resources, that life is by nature a zero-sum game, ignores critical truths that rightly deserve the designation of "natural law."
How can the Obama administration get it right in education when its data are all wrong and its assumptions about its faulty data are flawed?
If "Dow, 30,000 by 2008: Why It's Different This Time" wasn't optimistic enough, there was David Elias' "Dow 40,000: Strategies for Profiting from the Greatest Bull Market in History."
I met up recently with Ed Fancher, who published the Village Voice for 20. The Voice was very progressive during his tenure, so I assumed Fancher was another typical New Yorker for Obama. Think again.
